arXiv2026
Persistent homology maps a simplicial complex filtered by elements in $\mathbb R$ to finite formal sums of elements of $\mathbb R_{\leq}^{2} = \{ (b,d) \in \mathbb R^2 \cup \{ \infty \} \mid b < d \}$ called (finite) persistence diagrams. This map is stable with respect to the $p$--Wasserstein distance for all $p \in \left[1, + \infty \right]$. Bubenik and Elchesen extend the free translation-invariant commutative Lipschitz monoid of finite persistence diagrams $D(X,A) = D(X)/D(A)$ on arbitrary metric pairs $(X,d,A)$ with $A \subset X$ onto the free translation-invariant abelian Lipschitz group of virtual persistence diagrams $K(X,A) = K(X)/K(A)$ as an isometric embedding $D(X,A) \hookrightarrow K(X,A)$ via the Grothendieck group completion. They prove that the $p$-Wasserstein distance is translation invariant on $D(X,A)$ if and only if $p=1$ and define the unique translation-invariant embedding of $W_1[d]$ into $K(X,A)$ as $ρ.$ When $K(X,A)$ is locally compact abelian, translation-invariant kernels can be constructed via positive-definite functions and Bochner's theorem on the Pontryagin dual. We prove that, for the metric topology induced by $ρ$, the group $(K(X,A),ρ)$ is locally compact if and only if it is discrete, equivalently when the pointed metric space $(X/A,d_1,[A])$ is uniformly discrete, and hence this approach fails outside that case. Assuming instead that $(X/A,d_1,[A])$ is separable and not uniformly discrete, we develop a translation-invariant kernel theory for non--locally compact virtual persistence diagram groups. The group $K(X,A)$ embeds isometrically into its canonical Banach-space linearization $B=\widehat V(X,A)\cong\mathcal F(X/A,d_1)$, and each bounded symmetric positive operator $Q\colon B\to B^\ast$ determines a translation-invariant Gaussian kernel $k(x,y)=\exp\!\left(-\tfrac12\,\langle Q(x-y),x-y\rangle_{B,B^\ast}\right).$